Stacking Stones​A Creative Craft Blog

From the mind of Jason Kapcala comes an eclectic journal dedicated to the study of creative writing, rock music, tailgating, and other miscellany. The musings, meditations, contemplations, and ruminations expressed here are my own unless otherwise indicated. Please feel free to share your comments, thoughts, and opinions, but do so respectfully and intelligently.

The Underdog AwardBiggest Surprise of the Year

WINNER

With shrimp, crab, rice, and hardboiled egg, this hardly looks like your traditional chili, but it did what any good chili does. It warmed us up with its hearty flavor and narrowly edged out the super-simple Jamiacan Jerk Cod.

Runner Up:

WINNER

While a "vegetarian tailgate" might not always appeal to a red-blooded American male like Kap, this hearty stew had both Mina and Kap raving over its bold flavors, and the chickpeas with the rice meant that it still stuck to the ribs.

Runner Up:

The Fourth-Quarter Comeback AwardToughest Challenge of the Year

WINNER

From the same tailgate as the last winner comes this delicate monstrocity. First, you have to blister the pepper and peel its skin off without tearing through the flesh. Then you have to stuff with potatoes, cream cheese, and crab. Then you have to somehow keep it closed while you batter and deep fry it. And don't forget the curry paste sauce. It was a lot of work, but boy did it pay off!

Runner Up:

WINNER

Hours of work went in to planning these delicious meat dumplings. You had to prepare the batter, prepare the sauce , cut your meat, stuff the meat, and cook the tornadoes twice: once in a stovetop pan, and then bake them in the oven. Phew! But boy was it worth it.

Still, I couldn't help but feel disappointed in these cupcakes. I'll go on record now as saying, they aren't bad. It's just that I've made better Guinness cupcakes. Without sour cream in the batter, these babies got dry. We also ran into trouble with our first homemade caramel and had to switch up the recipe. This caramel was better, but it still got absorbed by the cake too quickly. A better plan, next time, would be to use a permade caramel sauce. (Or, you know, just make the other cupcakes I mentioned.)

(Dis)honorable mention goes to the Orange Crush wings--not orange-y enough, and just weird with the crushed up cornflakes on them.

Runner Up:

WINNER/LOSER

While the flavors of bananas and crepes is fail-safe, I have to say adding peanut butter to this recipe didn't really add anything. In fact, it made it so that there was almost too much going on in this recipe. The consistency of the peanut butter sauce was too thick, and the bananas foster didn't ignite, though Mina and Kap made sure to add plenty of liquor. It just wasn't all it cracked up to be, though the crepes were delicious.

(Dis)honorable Mention goes to the Bloody Mary wings. The dry rub we put on them first was a bit of a disaster. It leeched all the flavor out of the wings in minutes.

Runners Up:

WINNER

While I loved the pizzazz of our Harvest Moon pizzas, I have to give credit to an early piece of innovation on Kap's end. In the first weeks of our Tailgate, he used beer-bread to re-imagine his BLT. While the whole sandwich was really solid, I have to give credit to this kind of wonderful, kind of insane idea. I'd never eaten beer bread before, so this was an exciting treat for me. It gave the whole sandwich a slightly sweet, toothsome flavor that was pretty epic. Kap likes to take risks, and this one for me was a win that I never saw coming.

Runner Up:

The Future Dynasty AwardDish Most Likely to Repeat

WINNER

In order for me to make a dish again, it has to be excellent but also not time-intensive. For me, Mina's hearty vegetarian Chickpea and Spinach stew over rice was such a wonderful surprise. I would make this dish any night of the week, for myself or to serve a crowd. It's that good!

Her 12th-Man Teriyaki Skewers from the Super Bowl were also a hit. As was the Jamaican Jerk Cod and every Boston College Grad's favorite sandwich The New England Classic.

Runners Up:

WINNER

Kap and I both agree that any pizza is better than no pizza at all. In the interest of full disclosure, we made it through tons and TONS of pizzas over the summer, just trying out recipes on our days off before our tailgating season began. The Superman Pizza, though, in my mind has tons of dynastic potential. It's so easy to make (like most pizzas) but at the same time, it had all the flavors of the Italian Heroes that I grew up with, and my mouth is watering again at the thought of re-making it.

I have a feeling that Kap's mom would agree that our best runner-up was our Washington Apple Tarts: so quick, so easy, and so delicious on Superbowl Sunday.

Runner Up:

The Water Cooler All-Star AwardCocktail of the Year

WINNER

Shot Flight (Lemon Drop)Our drink recommendations can sometimes be the most enjoyable part of the tailgate. One course of libations stood out among the rest (I have a feeling Mina will agree with me on this one). That was our shot flight--in particular the Lemon Drop. Sweet and Tart--next to beer, nothing goes better with greasy tailgating food!

Insider Tip: This shot isn't that strong, so if you double the recipe, you can make yourself a nice martini-style drink with it.

Runner Up:

WINNER

Shot Flight (Lemon Drop) I'm with Kap on this one. The Lemon Drop was the best drink that we made all season, both in terms of aesthetic appeal in the glass, and in terms of taste. It's way better than the "hard lemonade" you buy in the store, and it's also easy enough to make a couple shots of them and pair it with pretty much any food we made all season. It's one of the best drinks I've ever had.

Runners Up:

Impact "Play" of the YearBest Move in the Kitchen

WINNER

"Just a Spoonful of Sugar"

Making the crab chili using canned crab (what we could afford) proved to be a challenge because the canned variety lacks the sweetness of its fresh-caught cousin. Mina, thinking on her feet, added a spoonful of brown sugar and it made all the difference.

Bonus Play: "Ordering a Pizza"

I don't know whose idea it was to d a desserts-only tailgate (probably mine), but that much sugar just about sent us into shock. It was a fun idea--but I don't ever need to repeat it. Ordering up a pizza to cut some of that sweetness wasn't a sign of defeat in my opinion, it was just sound thinking.

WINNER

"Where's the Bacon?"

I don't know how to fish, and I've never had a "Shore Lunch" before, but I will never forget Kap doing a good old-fashioned fish fry using the bacon grease he had just made after frying up some bacon for our Breakfast-for-Dinner/Pro Bowl Tailgate. It made the fish so flavorful and tender that it was melting in your mouth. Incredible.

Also: Always order a pizza. When in doubt, when you're sad, when you're happy, or when you're in a diabetic coma from too much sugar, just order the pizza. Always order the pizza.

MVP: Most Valuable PlateDish of the Year

WINNER

I wanted to go with the Chickpea stew, that's how much I love that dish. (Or the shore lunch sliders that remind me of fishing with my dad and brother in Canada.)

But in the end, it's the shrimp nachos. It was always the shrimp nachos. I know these are basically just an appetizer, but I wake up from a sound sleep thinking about them some nights. I even made them for my family just doing the shrimp alone (bang bang/boom boom/whatever-style)--so simple, but the sweet sauce and the crispy shrimp is what tailgating was made for.

Runner Up:

WINNER

We usually like to keep it simple for our tailgates, because we, like our dear readers, love to tailgate every week of the season, but can't break the bank to do so. However, when a dish is just so incredibly amazing and decadent that you can't forget it, that's when you have to go "Wow. What a meal!"

For me that was the Pork Belly and Scallops for our Surf and Turf tailgate. I'd never had pork belly before, and with the scallops it was just an incredibly rich combination of flavors and smells that blew me away. Well done, Kap!